Ex-Navy destroyer now East Coast artificial reef

From Statesman.com: Ex-Navy destroyer now East Coast artificial reef
ABOARD THE MV DELAWARE — Some sailors who served on the Navy destroyer USS Arthur W. Radford gathered Wednesday to watch it be pushed to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to become part of a manmade reef.

"It's sad to see it being sunk," said Lee String, 46, of Westville, N.J., who served on the ship in 1985 as a welder, pipefitter and plumber. "It was once a proud-looking ship, but it's better to see it go to that purpose rather than razor blades."

Officials say the 563-foot ship, which was decommissioned in 2003, is the longest vessel ever sunk as an artificial reef in the Atlantic Ocean.

It took about 3½ hours for the ship to submerge. Water initially entered the ship through the seacocks and started flooding the bottom of the hull. Then, just before 4 p.m., the bow went up slightly and the stern quickly flooded as the ship went down.

"I didn't think she was going to do it at first. She definitely took her own sweet time going down," said Scott Horne, 39, of Portsmouth, Va., who served a tour of duty on the ship. "She always put up a fight for a lot of things when we were under way. She always had her own way of doing things, but the mission always got accomplished. It's the same with this — she put up a fight, and then when she finally decided to let go, she did."

Plenty of manmade objects, including several retired New York City subway cars, are already submerged in the Atlantic to create habitats for sea life and new opportunities for deep-sea anglers and scuba divers.

The Radford's resting spot is about 130 feet of ocean on what is known as the Del-Jersey-Land reef, named for Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland. It lies about 25 miles off the Indian River Inlet in Delaware; Ocean City, Md.; and Cape May, N.J.

"It's been a very quick and relatively inexpensive ship to reef compared to some of the large ships that have been reefed recently," said Jeff Tinsman, reef coordinator with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. "We are excited today. This is the last step in the process".

Officials chartered a ferry for those who served on the destroyer, journalists and others to watch the sinking. Many of the more than 200 people who took up the offer were wearing hats or shirts with the destroyer's name. Some carried books of photos that had been taken aboard the Radford.

The ship, named for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Dwight Eisenhower, was launched March 1, 1975, and commissioned two years later. Over the next 26 years, it visited Venezuela, Panama, Argentina, Brazil, Senegal, Oman, Bahrain, Nova Scotia, Italy, Turkey and the Azores islands off the coast of Portugal.

One former sailor who watched the sinking planned to visit the ship underwater.

Douglas Warner, 48, of Virginia Beach, Va., just retired after 30 years in Navy, including two years aboard the Radford as a combat systems officer.

"Being a diver myself, I'm looking forward to hopefully next year coming back up here and being able to dive on her," he said.

Also among those attending the event was John Betts, 58, of Rehobeth, Del., who had no link to the ship but was interested in seeing the sinking with his wife.

"It was very interesting. I'm glad we made the trip," Betts said. "It's a once in a lifetime opportunity."

Treasure Hunter: E. Lee Spence

From Wikipedia: E. Lee Spence
Edward Lee Spence (born 1947 in Germany) is a pioneer in underwater archaeology[1] who studies shipwrecks and sunken treasure. He is also a published editor and author of non-fiction reference books; a magazine editor (Diving World, Atlantic Coastal Diver, Treasure, Treasure Diver, and Treasure Quest), and magazine publisher (ShipWrecks, Wreck Diver); and a published photographer. Spence was twelve years old when he found his first five shipwrecks.

Dr. Spence's past work has been funded by such institutions as the Savannah Ships of the Sea Museum, the College of Charleston, the South Carolina Committee for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1991 and 1992, Spence served as Chief of Underwater Archeology for San Andres y Providencia, a 40,000 square-mile Colombian owned archipelago in the western Caribbean. He has worked on the wrecks of Spanish galleons, pirate ships, Great Lakes freighters, modern luxury liners (cruise ships), Civil War blockade runners and submarines.

Discoveries
H. L. Hunley
Spence first reported the discovery of the Civil War submarine Hunley in 1970. Spence mapped and reported its location to numerous government agencies. The July 2007 cover story in U.S. News & World Report noted that the Hunley "disappeared without a trace" until 1970 when it was found by "underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence."

That report made no mention of novelist Clive Cussler, whose organization later (August 2008) dropped a lawsuit in federal district court against Spence in which it had claimed that they and not Spence had discovered the wreck in 1995. Both sides still claim that they and not the other discovered the wreck.

On September 13, 1976, the National Park Service submitted Sea Research Society's (Spence's) location for H.L. Hunley for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. Spence's location for Hunley became a matter of public record when H.L. Hunley's placement on that list was officially approved on December 29, 1978.

Spence's book Treasures of the Confederate Coast, which had a chapter on his discovery of Hunley and included a map complete with an "X" showing the wreck's location was published in January 1995.

In 1995 the discovery was independently verified by a combined South Carolina Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology (SCIAA) and National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) expedition directed by SCIAA underwater archaeologist Dr. Mark M. Newell and funded in part by novelist Clive Cussler. Later the same year, at the official request of Senator Glenn F. McConnell (chairman), of the State of South Carolina Hunley Commission, Spence donated all of his rights to the wreck to the State.

The Hunley discovery was described by Dr. William Dudley, Director of Naval History at the Naval Historical Center as probably the most important (underwater archaeological) find of the (20th) century." The tiny sub and its contents have been valued at over $40,000,000 making the discovery and donation one of the most significant and valuable contributions ever made to the State of South Carolina.

Other discoveries
Dr. Spence with KM17 Diving HelmetIn addition to the Hunley, Spence has discovered several historically significant shipwrecks, including the SS Georgiana (said to have been the most powerful cruiser built by the Confederate States of America).

South Carolina's law protecting both the State's and the salvors' interests in shipwrecks was passed following Spence's discovery of the Georgiana and his company Shipwrecks Inc. was granted South Carolina State Salvage License #1.

Spence states he has salvaged over $50,000,000 in valuable artifacts and has been responsible, through his archival research, for the location of the wrecks of the side-paddle-wheel steamers Republic and Central America from which over one billion dollars in treasure has been recovered.

On April 4, 1989, Spence announced his discovery that Margaret Mitchell, who had claimed her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gone with the Wind was pure fiction, had actually taken much of her compelling story of love, greed and war from real life and that Mitchell had actually based Rhett Butler on the life of George Alfred Trenholm, a tall, handsome, shipping magnate from Charleston, South Carolina, who had made millions of dollars from blockade running and was accused of making off with much of the Confederate treasury and had been thrown in prison after the Civil War. Spence's literary discovery that had its roots in his prior discoveries of some of Trenholm's wrecked blockade runners made international news.

The Encyclopedia Of Civil War Shipwrecks by W. Craig Gaines additionally credits Spence with the discoveries of the following Civil War wrecks: the Constance (lost 1864, found 1967); Housatonic (lost 1864, found 1970); Keokuk (lost 1863, found 1971); Minho (lost 1862, found 1965); Presto (lost 1864, found 1967); Ruby (lost 1863, found 1966); Stonewall Jackson (lost 1863, found 1965).[Spence's own books, as well as numerous third party books, newspaper and magazine accounts, and archaeological reports describe his discoveries of the blockade runners Mary Bowers and Norseman and dozens of other ships of all types and nations in waters all over the world spanning a time period of over two thousand years.

Cartography
Spence is also a cartographer and has published a number of popular and archaeological (proximal, contour and conformant) maps and charts dealing with historical events, archaeology, shipwrecks and treasure.

International Diving Institute
Dr. Spence is a founder, owner and Vice President of the International Diving Institute, one of fewer than a dozen schools in North America that teaches and certifies commercial deep sea divers.[39]

Credentials and affiliations
Current President and Chairman of the Board of the Sea Research Society, Dr. Spence is a past member of both the Board of Directors of the American Military Museum and Board of Directors of the Cardiovascular Research Institute of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. He is a lifetime member of Mensa International and a former member of Intertel. Spence has an honorable discharge from the United States Army Reserves and has served as Commander and Vice Commander for Post #10 of the veteran's organization American Legion.

Education
Spence graduated cum laude from the University of South Carolina in 1976, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with an academic concentration in marine archaeology and won the Donald O. Bushman Award in cartography. His doctorate is a Doctor of Marine Histories (DMH) from Sea Research Society's College of Marine Arts.

Certifications
Sidescan Sonar Operator - Associates - 1989;
Shipwreck Consultant - Sea Research Society - 1972;
Open Water Diver - Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) - 1969;
Scuba Instructor - NASDS - 1967;
Commercial Diver (surface supplied air) - Palmetto Diving Association - 1966;
Scuba Diver - Florida Safety Council - 1963

Dive into Arctic wreck reveals historical 'treasure'

From Ottawa Citizen: Dive into Arctic wreck reveals historical 'treasure'
A series of dives last month to the rediscovered Arctic Ocean wreck of HMS Investigator has revealed glimpses of what Parks Canada archeologists believe to be an unprecedented "treasure" of historical artifacts preserved in silt below the deck of the sunken 19th-century British ship, Postmedia News has learned.

The July expedition to the vessel's resting place in Mercy Bay, a frigid patch of water off the shore of Banks Island in the Northwest Territories, saw divers collect a handful of evocative relics — including a sailor's shoe and a largely intact rifle — that lay "in plain sight" and were at risk of disappearing in the seabed sludge.

But their key finding was confirming the likelihood that "thousands" of other objects — scientific specimens, crewmen's personal belongings, architectural fixtures, a stash of vintage booze in the ship's "spirits room" — have remained entombed and protected in the Royal Navy vessel since it became trapped in ice, was abandoned and then sank during a failed search for the lost Franklin Expedition in the early 1850s.

"We were blessed with really exceptional weather and very, very co-operative ice conditions," Ryan Harris, a Parks Canada underwater archeologist, told Postmedia News.

"There's a very high level of siltation inside the hold and that actually bodes quite well for preservation of what will probably amount to thousands upon thousands — or hundreds of thousands — of artifacts that are likely inside the vessel."

He said the ship itself is in remarkably good condition and described the "surreal" experience of seeing a ship so rich in history coming into view with each dive.

The Investigator, captained by Irish-born Robert McClure, had left a British port in 1850 to join what had become a desperate search for the lost ships and missing 129 men from Sir John Franklin's ill-fated Arctic expedition, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

McClure entered the Arctic from the Pacific but was forced to leave the ship when it became locked in ice at Mercy Bay in 1853. He ordered the creation of a cache of supplies on the nearby shore of Banks Island, then led his men on a sledge journey across the sea ice to their rescue by another British ship at Melville Island.

The crew's eastward route back to Britain marked the first recorded transit of the Northwest Passage — a combined voyage by ship and sledge that won McClure everlasting fame despite his failure to find Franklin and the loss of the Investigator, which sank in 1854.

Last summer, Harris and his Parks Canada colleagues became the first people to set eyes on the Investigator in 156 years and earned international acclaim for the feat.

But this year's dives offered the first close look at the 36-metre-long ship, which Harris said appears to have held up well despite being submerged for more than a century-and-a-half and suffering regular grindings from the seasonal ebb and flow of sea ice in Mercy Bay.

Key to that preservation, said Harris, was the copper cladding on the hull of the Investigator that was applied to protect all Royal Navy vessels — including the Erebus and Terror — bound for ice-choked Arctic waters in Canada.

A metre-wide section of the copper shield at risk of being shorn off the ship by an iceberg was also detached and recovered by the team. It will be added to a growing collection of metal artifacts found throughout the Arctic that came from stranded British ships and were often salvaged by 19th-century Inuit and fashioned into tools and important trade goods.

That dynamic was also evident in fresh discoveries made last month on the shore near the wreck, where "McClure's Cache" and surrounding areas of Banks Island were re-examined by a Parks Canada research team headed by land archeologist Henry Carey.

They found further evidence that the tin cans, tools, barrels and other objects stored on land by the Investigator's crew were eventually salvaged by Inuit for use in hunting, cooking and trade.

Carey expressed awe at the "tremendous distances that the material from the HMS Investigator travelled through the Inuit trade routes and the ingenious ways that material was incorporated into Inuit life."

For example, he said, metal from McClure's Cache was eventually fashioned by a crafty Inuk into the blades of a pair of scissors with bone handles — a poignant blending of European and aboriginal material culture.

But the researchers believe local Inuit did not gain access to the ice-locked Investigator before it sank, a further reason to believe much of the ship's original contents will be recoverable in the coming years.

The latest finds at and around the site of the Investigator wreck are fuelling optimism that a Parks Canada-led search later this month — far to the east in the central Arctic archipelago — will finally result in the discovery of the Franklin ships that McClure and other would-be rescuers never found.

NOAA, University Of Hawaii, Research Maui's World War II Legacy

The remains of an SB2C-1C Helldiver carrier-based dive-bomber rest on the seafloor off the Maui coast. credit University of Hawaii
From the Underwater Times: NOAA, University Of Hawaii, Research Maui's World War II Legacy
SILVER SPRING, Maryland -- NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries' Maritime Heritage Program and the University of Hawaii's Marine Option Program have completed a survey of sunken World War II-era aircraft and shipwrecks along Maui's southern coast. The two-week survey continues a longstanding collaboration between NOAA and the University of Hawaii in providing students with hands-on training in maritime archaeology surveying techniques.

The survey team produced scaled drawings and took photographs of six wreck sites, including a carrier-based dive bomber (SB2C-1C Helldiver); a carrier-based fighter plane (F6F Hellcat); and three amphibious assault vehicles (LVT-4 and LVTA-4s), two with mounted with 75mm howitzers. The documentation is used to evaluate wrecks for deterioration and helps identify when artifacts have been moved or go missing.

During World War II, prior to major invasions in the Pacific, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army personnel trained in landing craft and assault vehicles along Maui's southern coast from Maalaea Harbor to Ahihi Bay. Overhead, aircraft from Maui's Puunene Naval Air Station conducted combat practice runs. Amphibious operations and naval aviation proved to be two critical innovations of World War II that ultimately helped the United States secure victory in the Pacific.

Developing these new tactics, however, proved hazardous, as numerous planes and landing craft, and occasionally the lives of young servicemen, were lost around the islands. Today, the legacy of that period can be found in near-shore waters, where sunken aircraft and shipwrecks provide recreational diving sites, as well as habitat for marine species.

"The wrecks along the coast are like windows into the past and they remind us of the sacrifices made during World War II," said Hans Van Tilburg, NOAA maritime heritage coordinator. "The information collected during this project will help us better understand this chapter in our history and its significance to the Pacific."

For now, details surrounding the sinking of the assault vehicles near Makena, Maui, and the specific identity of the F6F Hellcat, remain mysteries pending further historical research. A project web site will be posted soon on the NOAA Maritime Heritage Program webpage. Funding for the project was provided by the University of Hawaii Manoa College of Natural Sciences.

Treasure Hunter: Mel Fisher

From Wikipedia:
Mel Fisher (August 21, 1922 – December 19, 1998) was an American treasure hunter best known for finding the 1622 wreck of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha, named after a shrine in Madrid for protection.

He discovered the wreck July 20, 1985. The estimated $450 million cache recovered, known as "The Atocha Motherlode," included 40 tons of gold and silver; there were some 114,000 of the Spanish silver coins known as "pieces of eight", gold coins, Colombian emeralds, gold and silver artifacts, and 1000 silver bars. Large as it was, this was only roughly half of the treasure that went down with the Atocha. The wealthiest part of the ship, the stern castle, is yet to be found.

Still missing are 300 silver bars and 8 bronze cannons, among other things. In addition to the Atocha, Fisher's company, Salvors Inc., found remains of several shipwrecks in Florida waters, including the Atocha's sister galleon the Santa Margarita, lost in the same year, and the remains of a slave ship known as the Henrietta Marie.

The site of the wreckage of the Atocha, called "The Bank of Spain", (a sandy area 22 feet deep and within 200 yards of the anchor location), is still being worked on and treasures are slowly being recovered. The emeralds from the Atocha are some of the finest emeralds in the world. They come from the Muzo Mine in Colombia. The emeralds of Muzo are renowned for their color and are the world standard by which all emeralds are judged.

Fisher was an Indiana-born former chicken farmer who eventually moved to California and opened the first diving shop in the state. He attended Purdue University and was a member of The Delta Chi Fraternity. In 1953, he married Dolores (Deo) Horton who became his business partner. She was one of the first women to learn how to dive and set a women's record by staying underwater for 50 hours. Mel and Deo had four children: sons Dirk, Kim and Kane, and daughter Taffi.

On July 13, 1975 Mel's oldest son Dirk, his wife Angel, and diver Rick Gage died after their boat capsized during their quest for treasure.

Mel Fisher hired Duncan Mathewson as chief archaeologist during the Atocha period, and Salvors, Inc. became experts in recovery and conservation of underwater artifacts, remaining active as of 2009. Fisher blended private and public interests when it came to underwater cultural resources. The Supreme Court of the United States confirmed Fisher's ownership to recovered treasure with a provision that Mel's company donates 20% of the artifacts to the state. Concern in the U.S., and Florida specifically, for protection of submerged archaeological sites contributed to the 2001 adoption of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage.

Whereabouts of cannon remain a mystery

From SILive.com (report on Aug 6, 2011) Whereabouts of cannon remain a mystery
Members of the Staten Island Sports Divers, as well as the National Resources Protective Association, conducted a dive yesterday morning off the shore of the Conference House Park in Tottenville.

The group was searching for a 400-pound, iron cannon that was used during the Revolutionary War. "The location of the cannon remains a mystery," said Jim Scarcella, of NRPA. "We did a lot with the metal detectors, and we found what appeared to be an automobile bumper or chassis, but no cannon."

The historic weapon spent nearly 40 years chained to a stone pedestal on the side of the Conference House, before it disappeared on May 21, 1972 -- two centuries after the British operated it to repel an attack from American General John Sullivan and 1,500 troops from Carteret, N.J. It had been donated in 1933 by Virginia Cutting; it had been on her family's waterfront estate in Rossville for many years.

Nobody knows how it vanished, but over time, rumors have circulated, some suggesting the cannon is in the water. "We are going to regroup and evaluate our findings to see if we think it's worth another shot. It might just not be there," said Scarcella.

Meanwhile, on land, volunteers helped remove debris -- including traffic cones, bottles, oil containers, plastic bags, and driftwood -- from the beaches of Conference House Park. The next beach cleanup will be at New Dorp Beach in September. For more information, call Scarcella at 718-873-4291.

NOAA, University Of Hawaii, Research Maui's World War II Legacy

Fron the Underwater Times: NOAA, University Of Hawaii, Research Maui's World War II Legacy
WOODS HOLE, Massachusetts -- It's been called everything from the Graveyard of the Atlantic to Torpedo Junction. By whatever name, the seas off the coast of North Carolina during World War II were the site of a devastating period for the United States, during which dozens of ships—mostly merchant vessels—were sunk by German U Boats.

Today, the remains of those ships, along with several U Boats, rest at the bottom of the Atlantic. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that from January to August 1942, alone, more than 50 vessels were lost to the U-Boat assault.

"They sank ships at will," says Evan Kovacs, director of 3D photography for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's (WHOI) Advanced Imaging and Visualization Lab (AIVL), which is embarking on a 10-day mission to provide NOAA with the first 3-D optical survey of the undersea wrecks off the Carolina coast. The cooperative venture, funded by NOAA's Office of Exploration and Research, will also employ a team of divers and archeologists from the National Park Service Submerged Resource Center, UNC Coastal Studies Institute and the Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration Research and Technology.

"We hope to get a full 3-D picture of several sites so that NOAA can go back and assess the wrecks' condition and the impact of the ships on the marine environment," said Kovacs. "We're breaking new ground."

"This is our first large-scale marine archeology program with NOAA," said AIVL Director Bill Lange. "We hope it will be the first of many such cooperative programs." Lange and his team have been conducting similar marine archeology programs with the National Park Service and State agencies over the last 5-6 years.

From a purely scientific perspective, the mission presents a unique opportunity, according to NOAA, which has dubbed the project The Battle of the Atlantic. "For the first time, these expedition scientists will study a maritime battleground off the coast of North Carolina, " according to NOAA officials.

The mission, currently in progress aboard the NOAA vessel SRVx, employs a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) outfitted with several underwater 3-D and high-definition camera systems developed by Lange and Kovacs. Over the course of the survey, the ROV pilot will work closely with technical dive teams in surveying the wrecks previously identified by the side scan sonar survey. The NOAA NPS and WHOI teams expect to conduct these optical surveys and close up inspection task on targets as deep as 500-600 feet. The technical dive teams will utilize AIVL's smaller diver-operated underwater 3D and 2D imaging systems in order to acquire imagery that would be difficult for the ROV to accomplish.

The WHOI survey and mapping effort is the most detailed phase of the project, which is coordinated by NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. Previous stages utilized a sonar system to provide a wide-area remote-sensing survey to give researchers a 'big picture' or birds-eye-view of the battlefield area.

NOAA then employed a multi-beam sonar system to "zoom in" on some of the wrecks for a closer look.

WHOI's mission will deliver what promises to be the most dramatic still and video images, which will provide the detailed data needed to fashion the large, two- and three-dimensional mosaic maps of the shipwreck sites.

"These videos will be used to create detailed pictures that researchers can use to monitor changes in that vessel over time" NOAA project officials say on their website. "The 3D videos will also make exceptional education and outreach tools. As a program that has dual responsibilities for both science and education, this system integrates perfectly with our program objectives," said Joe Hoyt, Principal Investigator for the Battle of the Atlantic Project.

Says Lange: "Using the imagery we collect on this expedition, we hope to work with NOAA in the future to create educational videos." A number of television documentaries are also in development to cover these expeditions.

Kovacs cautions that the mission is not without potential problems, primarily those generated from relatively deep waters and high currents that could affect the performance of the scientific instruments. "But," assures Lange, "we're very good at transforming work-class ROVs into sophisticated image platforms."

Using high-end deep submergence platforms, Lange and his AIVL colleagues have surveyed numerous high-profile wrecks, most notably the Titanic, as well as natural formations on the seafloor.

The WHOI researchers are particularly excited by their role in the Battle of the Atlantic project because of its potential to provide a first look at a critical piece of wartime history. "They've known about some of these ships for decades," Kovacs said, but this will be the first time the site will be surveyed and mapped in such detail.

In addition, project researchers will be on the lookout for one of the last of the known German U-Boats, which has yet to be found.

The WHOI portion of the project is funded by NOAA and private sources, Lange said.

Treasure Hunter: Robert F. Marx

From WIkipedia:
Robert F. Marx (born December 8, 1933) is one of the pioneer American scuba divers and is best known for his work with shipwrecks and sunken treasure. Although he is considered controversial for his frequent and successful forays into treasure hunting, fellow treasure hunter E. Lee Spence describes Marx as the true father of underwater archaeology.

Marx became a diving specialist in the United States Marine Corps in 1953. He has since made over 5,000 dives and has authored over 800 reports\articles and 59 books on history, archaeology, shipwrecks and exploration.

Marx and his wife, Jenifer, live in Indialantic, Florida. They are co-authors of several non-fiction books.

He was a founding member of the Council on Underwater Archaeology and of the Sea Research Society and served on the Society's Board of Advisors. In 1972 participated in the creation of the research/professional degree of Doctor of Marine Histories.

Marx was made a Knight-commander in the Order of Isabella the Catholic by the Spanish government for his re-enactment in the Nina II of Christopher Columbus' first voyage of exploration.

Spanish galleons: Nuestra Señora de Atocha

Nuestra Señora de Atocha ("Our Lady of Atocha") was the most famous of a fleet of Spanish ships that sank in 1622 off the Florida Keys while carrying copper, silver, gold, tobacco, gems, jewels, jewelry and indigo from Spanish ports at Cartagena, Colombia, Porto Bello in New Granada and Havana bound for Spain. The ship was named for the parish of Atocha in Madrid.

An unfortunate series of complications kept the Atocha in Veracruz before she could rendezvous in Havana with the vessels of the Tierra Firme (Mainland) Fleet. After still more delays in Havana, what was ultimately a 28-ship convoy did not manage to depart for Spain until September 4, 1622, six weeks behind schedule.

On September 6, the Atocha was driven by a severe hurricane onto the coral reefs near the Dry Tortugas, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) west of Key West. With her hull badly damaged, the vessel quickly sank, drowning everyone on board except for three sailors and two slaves.

Impact of the lossAfter the surviving ships brought the news of the disaster back to Havana, Spanish authorities dispatched another five ships to salvage the Atocha and the Santa Margarita, which had run aground near where the Atocha sank. The Atocha had sunk in approximately 55 feet of water, making it difficult for divers to retrieve any of the cargo or guns from the ship. A second hurricane in October of that year made attempts at salvage even more difficult by scattering the wreckage of the ship still further.

The Spaniards undertook salvage operations for several years, with the help of Indian slaves, and they recovered nearly half of the registered part of the vast treasure from the holds of the Margarita, whose remains rested in water sufficiently shallow for breath-holding divers.

The loss of the 1622 fleet had an immediate impact on Spain, forcing it to borrow more to finance its role in the Thirty Years' War and to sell several galleons to raise funds. While their efforts over the next 10 years to salvage the Margarita were successful, the Spanish never located the Atocha.

Modern recovery and legal battle
American treasure hunter Mel Fisher and a team of sub-contractors, funded by investors and others in a joint venture, searched the sea bed for the Atocha for 16 and a half years; Fisher had earlier recovered portions of the wrecked cargo of the sister ship Santa Margarita in 1980. He also proposed the idea to several other potential helpers who were discouraged by the fact that this dangerous professional diving job was at minimum wage unless the ship was found. The Atocha wreck and its mother lode of silver, gold and emeralds was finally discovered on July 20, 1985. It was Mel's son, Kane, who radioed the news to Treasure Salvors headquarters on the Florida coast, from the salvage boat Dauntless.

It is understood by experts that the sterncastle, the part of the ship that would hold most of the gold and rare Muzo emeralds, is still missing from the shipwreck. These and other valuable items would have been stored in the Captain's cabin for safekeeping in the rear part of the Atocha.

The salvaged coins, both gold and silver, were minted primarily between 1598 and 1621, although numerous earlier dates were represented too, some of the dates extending well back into the 16th century. Many of the dates and types of the period had been either rare or unknown prior to the salvage of the wreck.

After the discovery, the United States government claimed title to the wreck and the State of Florida seized many of the items Fisher had retrieved from his earliest salvage expeditions. After eight years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Fisher.

In June 2011, treasure divers from Mel Fisher's Treasure found an antique emerald ring believed to be from the Spanish boat. It is said the ring is worth an estimated $500,000. The ring was found 35 miles from Key West, along with two silver spoons and other artifacts,

Underwater Archaeologists Discover Shipwreck Believed To Be From Captain Henry Morgan's Lost Fleet

From the Underwater Times: Underwater Archaeologists Discover Shipwreck Believed To Be From Captain Henry Morgan's Lost Fleet
NORWALK, Connecticut -- A team of leading U.S. archaeologists have discovered the wreckage of a ship they believe to be part of Captain Henry Morgan's lost fleet at the mouth of the Chagres River in Panama.

Near the Lajas Reef, where Morgan lost five ships in 1671, including his flagship "Satisfaction," the team uncovered roughly 52x22 feet of the starboard side of a wooden ship's hull and a series of unopened cargo boxes and chests encrusted in coral. The artifacts were buried deep beneath a thick layer of sand and mud.

The underwater research team, comprised of leading archaeologists and divers from Texas State University, including volunteers from the National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center and NOAA/UNC-Wilmington's Aquarius Reef Base, located the shipwreck with the help of a magnetometer survey, an underwater archaeological technique used to locate anomalies in the magnetic field below the surface of the water.

Due to the shallow waters and close proximity to the coast, treasure hunters have stolen many of the artifacts of monetary value, like gold coins, from the surrounding areas. In an attempt to help save the historic site from looting, the dive team is working closely with the Panamanian government to study and carefully preserve artifacts, which are an integral part of Panama's history and heritage.

"For us, the real treasure is the shipwrecks themselves, which can give us the ability to accurately tell the story of a legendary historical figure like Captain Henry Morgan," said Frederick "Fritz" H. Hanselmann, underwater archaeologist and Research Faculty with the River Systems Institute and the Center for Archaeological Studies at Texas State University. "Discoveries of this nature allow us to study these artifacts and teach others what life was like for these famous privateers more than three hundred years ago."

In the 17th century, Captain Henry Morgan sailed as a privateer on behalf of England, defending the Crown's interests and pioneering expeditions to the 'New World.' In 1671, in an effort to capture Panama City and loosen the stronghold of Spain in the Caribbean, Morgan set out to take the Castillo de San Lorenzo, a Spanish fort on the cliff overlooking the entrance to the Chagres River, the only water passageway between the Caribbean and the capital city. Although his men ultimately prevailed, Morgan lost five ships to the rough seas and shallow reef surrounding the fort.

In September 2010, the team recovered six iron cannons from a nearby site also believed to be from one of the notorious Welsh privateer's ships. Additional funding was needed to explore the surrounding sites in search of the lost ships. It was at this time that the Captain Morgan rum brand, which took its inspiration from the legendary privateer, provided the dive team with a grant enabling them to continue their research.

"Captain Henry Morgan was a natural-born leader with a sense of adventure and an industrious spirit that the brand embraces today," said Tom Herbst, Brand Director, Captain Morgan USA. "When the opportunity arose for us to help make this discovery mission possible, it was a natural fit for us to get involved. The artifacts uncovered during this mission will help bring Henry Morgan and his adventures to life in a way never thought possible."

Artifacts excavated by the dive team in 2010, including the six cannons, as well as any future relics will remain the property of the Panamanian government and will be preserved and displayed by the Patronato Panama Viejo.

National Geographic’s Enric Sala is a man on a mission

Washington Post: National Geographic’s Enric Sala is a man on a mission

Enric Sala remembers the exact moment he decided he wanted to be a National Geographic explorer — one of the few lucky souls who launch expeditions financed and documented by one of the nation’s most venerable institutions. A decade ago he was sitting in his office at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. — an academic perch with an idyllic view of the Pacific Ocean — as he unwrapped the brown paper that used to cover issues of National Geographic.

“There’s a guy walking in the African jungle looking like a maniac, with a bunch of pygmies behind him, exhausted,” Sala recalled. “I said, ‘Wow, this is what I want to do.’ ”

It was National Geographic explorer Mike Fay, who had walked more than 2,000 miles across the Congo Basin. The series about his journey inspired the president of Gabon to create his country’s first system of national parks.

The 42-year-old Sala — a Spaniard and respected marine biologist — gave up a tenured post at Scripps three years ago to move to the District, “trying to save the last wild places in the ocean” as National Geographic’s newest explorer-in-residence.

Being a 21st-century explorer, it turns out, entails advocacy as well as adventure. And it reflects a different mission for National Geographic, a 123-year-old Washington institution that no longer simply showcases stunning photographs and stories of the planet’s most remote places, but now acts on their behalf.

National Geographic has funded nearly 10,000 expeditions over the past century and reported on them in its magazine’s pages, bringing extraordinary sites to a global audience. It helped Robert E. Peary explore the North Pole in 1909 and assisted Hiram Bingham as he excavated the lost Inca city of Machu Picchu between 1912 and 1915. Its money helped produce iconic images of the underwater world — as Jacques Cousteau conducted oceanographic research in the 1950s and ’60s — and reshape the way we view evolution, as Mary and Richard Leakey unearthed the fossils of some of the earliest humans.

Recently the institution’s 14 explorers have started posing some uncomfortable questions to their longtime benefactor. They are nudging it to engage in public policy debates, though they don’t dispatch staffers to Capitol Hill as other environmental groups do.

“Increasingly now what they tell us is things are changing — the historical, cultural, natural resources of this planet are changing, and, in many cases, they’re disappearing,” said Terry Garcia, National Geographic’s executive vice president for mission programs, adding that the explorers have started to ask, “Do you really want us to simply chronicle the demise of the planet?”

Brian Skerry, who has worked as a National Geographic contract photographer for 13 years, underwent this transformation over the course of his career.

“At first, when I began, I was only interested in the celebratory picture,” he said during a panel on oceans at the Center for American Progress this month. After discovering “environmental stories I couldn’t ignore,” Skerry said, he began reporting such subjects as industrial fishing and climate change. “It’s not like a grocery store, the ocean; we can’t keep taking things out and expect everything’s okay.”

The explorers use both high- and low-tech equipment, some of which is financed by National Geographic, to conduct their high-stakes journeys. Fay made his entire Congo trek in a pair of shorts and Tevas, but he now uses everything from kayaks to snowshoes for his explorations. Robert Ballard relies on remotely operated vehicles at times to investigate shipwrecks in the Black Sea. Documentary filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert spot African wildlife — and those who hunt the animals — from small aircraft. And Sala uses deep-water “drop cams,” mini-helicopters and high-definition underwater cameras.

Sala made the leap to National Geographic full time in 2008, identifying potential marine reserve areas as an ocean fellow at the group’s headquarters. Garcia recalled how Sala sat in his D.C. office and explained the limits of his academic job, saying that it offered security and intellectual freedom, “but what it means is I’ll just be writing one academic paper after another, and all the while the ocean, and the marine organisms in the ocean, are going to be disappearing. And I don’t want to do that.”

Sala did not become an explorer-in-residence overnight. He was awarded the title “emerging explorer” in 2007 before ascending in National Geographic’s hierarchy and becoming an ocean fellow. This caused some confusion when in June he called his parents in Girona, Spain, to deliver the news that he had been named an explorer-in-residence, along with filmmaker James Cameron.

“They both said, ‘I thought you were already an explorer,’ ” he recounted.

Sala — who is striking and lean, with brown hair he pulls back in a ponytail — leads what he calls “a schizophrenic life,” interspersing expeditions with policy and academic work. Just a few weeks before Sebastián Piñera was elected president of Chile in January 2010, Sala met him at the World Economic Forum and chatted about how both of them had been scuba diving off Chile’s Sala y Gomez, an area near Easter Island.

As a couple of other Latin American presidents pulled Piñera away, Sala said, “So when you become president, we’re going to talk about this place.” Sala lobbied him with a letter and through several intermediaries; less than a year after taking office, Piñera declared the 58,000-square-mile area a marine reserve, off-limits to extractive activities.

Though he was raised speaking Catalan (he reverts to his first language when cursing or taking personal notes), Sala spoke to Piñera in Spanish. He also speaks French, Italian and English fluently, a lingual dexterity that adds to his persuasiveness.

“I call him the Antonio Banderas of the marine world, because he’s so charming,” said Nancy Baron, science outreach director for the group COMPASS, which helps researchers engage in public policy.

This includes appealing to allies such as the pop singer Bjork, who decided to donate $34,000 from “Mount Wittenberg Orca,” a recording she did with the experimental rock band Dirty Projectors, to fund Sala’s marine reserve work.

“He seemed to be a man on a mission who would not mess about,” the Icelandic singer said in a phone interview, adding that after meeting him at National Geographic’s headquarters, she became convinced that if he planned a project, “it would actually work; it would not be just talk.”

In fact, Sala spends much of his time planning expeditions that cost between $500,000 and $1 million. They include not only researchers but photographers and bloggers, who can chronicle the wonders of areas he lobbies to place off-limits.

Ken Weiss, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times reporter who journeyed with Sala to the South Pacific island of Palmyra in 2005 when Sala was based at Scripps, describes him as the “most stylish diver I’ve ever seen.” He is meticulous about his Italian diving gear, with elongated fins and the sort of soft and malleable neoprene fabric that Mediterranean spear fishermen prefer for spending an extended time underwater.

“He’s just suspended in the water column,” Weiss recalled, adding that as Sala remained motionless horizontally, he resembled “a matador, with sharks swimming all around him.”

Much of marine biology — counting fish in transects, sorting the numbers afterward — can be tedious, and Sala has little patience for it.

Boris Worm, marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, recalled how he and Sala spearheaded a groundbreaking workshop a few years ago that produced the headline-grabbing conclusion that the world’s commercial fish stocks could collapse by 2048: “I was the guy trying to whip people into crunching data; he was going out with people and drinking wine and beer, and having these discussions that led to inspired ideas. So it was a good tag team.”

Sala still publishes academic papers regularly. Last week he was co-author of a study in the Public Library of Science ONE journal showing that Cabo Pulmo National Park, in an area that Sala’s childhood hero Cous­teau called “the aquarium of the world,” is the world’s most robust marine reserve.

What Sala relishes, however, is immersing himself in places such as the waters around Costa Rica’s Cocos Island, where 200 hammerhead sharks can swim by as he’s holding his breath, or off Kiribati’s Millennium Atoll, where giant clams in electric blue and fluorescent green carpet the seafloor.

“Because they filter water, it is so clear you feel you are flying,” he said. “The entire experience is hallucinogenic because you feel you are flying on this carpet of giant clams.”

When he was done diving, he made a pitch to the Kiribati government that it should protect Millennium from exploitation. He showed officials pictures of what was underwater. “You should have seen their faces,” he said. “They had no idea what they had there.”

A few obstacles remain — Sala is working on drafting an economic model to show developing nations such as Kiribati that they can profit more from protecting the sea than mining its re­sources. “I am a salesman of ideas,” he said.

And National Geographic has limited resources itself, making financing future expeditions “a challenge,” as Garcia put it. But he has no doubt that Sala will be back at sea soon. “If we’re not exploring, if we’re not sending people into the field, then what are we?”

Expert to take Titanic wreck photos

From Tyrone Times: Expert to take Titanic wreck photos
The man who discovered the wreck of the Titanic is to return to its final resting place to capture fresh images of the ship for a new £100 million visitor attraction in Belfast.


Dr Robert Ballard will journey two-and-a-half miles to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean next month to film the mangled stern section, which broke off from the rest of the liner as she sank on her maiden voyage in 1912.

His footage will enable Belfast's Titanic Signature Project, which is under construction in the same docklands where the ship was built, to show visitors the first complete image of the wreck which Dr Ballard discovered in 1985.

Details of the underwater venture emerged as the team building the project - which will be the world's largest Titanic attraction - briefly opened its doors to show off progress to date.

Live streamed pictures of all future submarine trips to the wreck will also be broadcast in the centre from April next year when it opens just ahead of the 100th anniversary of the sinking.

Project manager Noel Molloy said the underwater map was only one unique feature of many set to be housed in the eye-catching white-panelled building, which is modelled on the Titanic's bow.

"The Titanic broke in two before she went down," he said. "There's always been that debate, did she or did she not, but Dr Ballard found it in two sections so it did break down.

"So there is this other section, but whatever way that section hit the ocean bed it just absolutely smashed it, so nobody's ever really done a (photo) mosaic of that. Dr Ballard is going down for us because it's not complete."

The centre compromises nine separate galleries, each telling a different part of the Titanic story from the Harland and Wolff shipyard to the disaster that claimed more than 1,500 lives to its eventual re-discovery 70 years later.

The experience will see visitors flown through parts of the exhibition on a specially-constructed sky rail system in 12 six-people pods.

Odyssey's Gairsoppa Shipwreck Project Underway

From Underwater Times: Odyssey's Gairsoppa Shipwreck Project Underway
TAMPA, Florida -- Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc., a pioneer in the field of deep-ocean shipwreck exploration, has begun its search for the SS Gairsoppa aboard the Russian research vessel the RV Yuzhmorgeologiya.

"The team, tools and technology are in place for the Gairsoppa project and the ship has left port to head directly to the search area. The technology that the Russian research institute has brought to the project is perfect for this expedition. Odyssey's Senior Project Manager Andrew Craig, who has contributed to all our major shipwreck finds beginning with the SS Republic, is currently leading the operation. We have a great research file on this shipwreck and we're hopeful that we can complete the search successfully within the next 60 days," said Greg Stemm, Odyssey CEO. "It's an exciting season for Odyssey. In addition to the Gairsoppa search operations aboard the Yuzhmorgeologiya, the Odyssey Explorer has a full schedule working on shipwrecks and the Dorado Discovery is mid-way through another productive seafloor massive sulfide deposit survey in the South Pacific."

The Gairsoppa was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in February 1941 while enlisted in the service of the United Kingdom (UK) Ministry of War Transport. Contemporary research and official documents indicate that the ship was carrying as much as £600,000 (1941 value) in silver when it sank, which would equal approximately 7,000,000 ounces of the precious metal. The UK Department for Transport awarded Odyssey, through a competitive bid, the exclusive salvage contract for the cargo of the SS Gairsoppa in 2010. Under the salvage contract, Odyssey will pay the UK Government 20% of the value of the cargo. Timing of the recovery operation will depend on the physical disposition of the shipwreck and weather.

National Geographic Filmmakers on the Judging Panel for Student Films in 2011 Gray’s Reef Ocean Film Festival

From Sacannah The Creative Coast: National Geographic Filmmakers on the Judging Panel for Student Films in 2011 Gray’s Reef Ocean Film Festival
Savannah, Ga., Aug 19 2011— The panel of judges for the Dr. Robert O. Levitt Emerging Filmmaker Award at the 2011 Gray’s Reef Ocean film Festival is hard at work and the scores are starting to come in. This year’s judges’ panel includes filmmaker Lou Douros whose film, “In the Wake of Giants,” will be shown Friday night Sept. 23 as well as several veterans of the National Geographic Film and Television unit.

The nine student films are competing for the Dr. Robert O. Levitt Award for Emerging Filmmakers. Other judges are Keenan Smart, retired National Geographic film and television producer; Kathy Pasternak, of Pasternak Media, LLC and National Geographic producer; Gayla Jamison, Lightfoot Films; Andy Mitchell, National Geographic; Mickey Youmans, filmmaker and television producer; and Garrett McCarey, documentary film and television producer. Several of the judges have had films in the festival in previous years.

Nine short environmental documentaries produced by Savannah College of Art and Design students have been accepted for screening at the eight annual Gray’s Reef Ocean film Festival September 22-24 in Savannah. The free festival screens award-winning ocean documentaries to promote stewardship of the world ocean resources.

The student films will be screened at noon Saturday September 24 at Trustees Theater.

Levitt, a Savannah internist, loved SUBA diving. He was a pioneer in dive medicine and taught SCUBA for many years and wrote the first diving instruction text books used by the YMCA’s diving instructors.

Levitt was inspired by undersea explorer and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau and by Lloyd Bridges’ early television show, “Sea Hunt’’ to carry on his own diving adventures, favoring the West Indies and Mexico. He spent time diving with the Cousteau family.

While practicing medicine in Chicago, Levitt became involved with the Shed Aquarium. He was a founder of “Our World Underwater,” a consumer oriented dive show with an ocean film component. As president of the Coastal Georgia Archaeological Society, he brought the International Society for Historical Archaeology’s Conference for Historical and Underwater Archaeology to Savannah. At that meeting, Savannah’s residents were the first to see Bob Ballard’s original underwater footage of the ship Titanic.

Savannah resident Kathryn Levitt carries on Levitt’s interest in and concern for the ocean world today with her continued support of the Gray’s Reef Ocean Film Festival. Her support allows the Gray’s Reef Ocean Film Festival to offer first, second and third place prizes designed to help the student filmmakers further their underwater filmmaking careers.

A complete schedule and up to the minute 2011 Gray’s Reef Ocean Film Festival information will be posted on our website: http://graysreef.noaa.gov as well as on our Facebook page facebook.com/OceanFilmFestivalSavannahGraysReef. Links to film clips will be posted on Facebook as they become available.

Piece of shuttle Columbia found in a dried out Texas lake eight years after tragic crash

From Daily Mail Online: Piece of shuttle Columbia found in a dried out Texas lake eight years after tragic crash
A piece of debris from the doomed space shuttle Columbia has been found in a lake in Texas after drought caused the water levels to recede, exposing the relic eight years after it fell to Earth.
Police in Nacogdoches called Nasa after a 4ft-wide sphere that plunged from the spacecraft as it broke up during its return to Earth on February 1, 2003, was found sitting in mud on the north side of the local lake.
More than 84,000 pieces of wreckage from Columbia rained down on Texas and Louisiana as the spacecraft disintegrated at hypersonic speed, just minutes before it had been due to land at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.

Seven astronauts were killed in the disaster, which occurred during atmospheric re-entry as hot gases seeped into a hole that had been knocked in the left wing during Columbia’s launch 16 days earlier.
Millions watched in horror as television cameras captured images of the shuttle trailing smoke and shedding debris 230,000ft (62kms) above the Earth while travelling at 12,000mph. In Texas, people heard sonic booms and felt the shockwave from its break-up.
Nasa confirmed today that the object found in Lake Nacogdoches was part of Columbia’s power reactant and storage distribution system, which held the cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen necessary for the vehicle’s fuel cells to produce electricity in space.
Lisa Malone, director of public affairs at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, said: 'We have confirmed it as one of the 16 tanks that we had flying on board Columbia as part of the orbiter's electrical distribution system. It's definitely ours.'

Between 38 and 40 per cent of Columbia has been recovered in the eight years since the disaster. All of it is stored under climate-controlled conditions and out of public view. Some has been used by forensic analysts and scientists at institutions around the world to learn more about how spacecraft materials react during atmospheric re-entry and at hypersonic speeds.
'Now and then we hear from citizens, sometimes from hunters, who are out in rural areas and find a piece of debris. They call and send us pictures, we validate whether it is a piece of the shuttle Columbia and we arrange for all of it to come back here to Florida,' said Ms Malone.
The space agency is arranging for a team to retrieve this piece and return it to Kennedy Space Centre, where the bulk of the shuttle’s wreckage is still stored on the 16th floor of Nasa’s Vehicle Assembly Building.

Each piece was numbered and catalogued to help investigators to piece together the shattered spacecraft like a giant jigsaw puzzle in the search for clues to its demise, and the geographical location at which each piece was found was plotted using global positioning satellite technology.
Divers assisted the search at the time, scouring lakes for Columbia relics, while horses, tractors and four-wheel drive vehicles were called on to haul larger pieces from where they fell. Among the wreckage, remains of some of the astronauts were also recovered.
Nacogdoches, a community of 33,000 people that touts itself as the oldest town in Texas, was central to the search operation. Residents were warned not to touch the wreckage.

Home U.K. Home News Sport U.S. Showbiz Femail Health Science&Tech Money Debate Travel Rewards Club News Home Arts Headlines Pictures Most read News Board My Profile Logout Login Find a Job Dating Wine Our Papers Feedback My Stories Wednesday, Aug 17 2011 6AM 68°F 9AM 64°F 5-Day Forecast Piece of shuttle Columbia found in a dried out Texas lake eight years after tragic crashBy Jacqui Goddard

Last updated at 2:25 PM on 5th August 2011

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A piece of debris from the doomed space shuttle Columbia has been found in a lake in Texas after drought caused the water levels to recede, exposing the relic eight years after it fell to Earth.
Police in Nacogdoches called Nasa after a 4ft-wide sphere that plunged from the spacecraft as it broke up during its return to Earth on February 1, 2003, was found sitting in mud on the north side of the local lake.
More than 84,000 pieces of wreckage from Columbia rained down on Texas and Louisiana as the spacecraft disintegrated at hypersonic speed, just minutes before it had been due to land at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.
This 4-feet in diameter sphere found was found in Lake Nacogdoches, Texas on Monday, as a drought has lowered the water level. The container-like object is likely from space shuttle Columbia
Shuttle debris landed across Texas and into Louisiana as the shuttle streaked back towards a landing at the Kennedy Space Center. The shuttle exploded 16 minutes landing
Seven astronauts were killed in the disaster, which occurred during atmospheric re-entry as hot gases seeped into a hole that had been knocked in the left wing during Columbia’s launch 16 days earlier.
Millions watched in horror as television cameras captured images of the shuttle trailing smoke and shedding debris 230,000ft (62kms) above the Earth while travelling at 12,000mph. In Texas, people heard sonic booms and felt the shockwave from its break-up.
Nasa confirmed today that the object found in Lake Nacogdoches was part of Columbia’s power reactant and storage distribution system, which held the cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen necessary for the vehicle’s fuel cells to produce electricity in space.
Lisa Malone, director of public affairs at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, said: 'We have confirmed it as one of the 16 tanks that we had flying on board Columbia as part of the orbiter's electrical distribution system. It's definitely ours.'
The Columbia takes off January 16, 2003. On the right is a video image released by NASA that shows debris falling off the external tank at approximately 80-84 seconds after lift off
In these images made from video, combined from left to right in chronological order, trails from the debris of the space shuttle are seen in the sky over Texas on February 1, 2003
Between 38 and 40 per cent of Columbia has been recovered in the eight years since the disaster. All of it is stored under climate-controlled conditions and out of public view. Some has been used by forensic analysts and scientists at institutions around the world to learn more about how spacecraft materials react during atmospheric re-entry and at hypersonic speeds.
'Now and then we hear from citizens, sometimes from hunters, who are out in rural areas and find a piece of debris. They call and send us pictures, we validate whether it is a piece of the shuttle Columbia and we arrange for all of it to come back here to Florida,' said Ms Malone.
The space agency is arranging for a team to retrieve this piece and return it to Kennedy Space Centre, where the bulk of the shuttle’s wreckage is still stored on the 16th floor of Nasa’s Vehicle Assembly Building.

The found wreckage of the space shuttle is seen in March 2003 on a grid in a hangar at the Kennedy Space Center. The shape of the orbiter on the grid is with the nose in the foreground. The debris is now catalogued in storage
Each piece was numbered and catalogued to help investigators to piece together the shattered spacecraft like a giant jigsaw puzzle in the search for clues to its demise, and the geographical location at which each piece was found was plotted using global positioning satellite technology.
Divers assisted the search at the time, scouring lakes for Columbia relics, while horses, tractors and four-wheel drive vehicles were called on to haul larger pieces from where they fell. Among the wreckage, remains of some of the astronauts were also recovered.
Nacogdoches, a community of 33,000 people that touts itself as the oldest town in Texas, was central to the search operation. Residents were warned not to touch the wreckage.
The Columbia mission crew were honored posthumously with the highest award given within NASA, the Congressional Space Medal of Honour

'We want to remind everyone that the rules are the same as they were back in 2003….it is government property, and it is a criminal offence to tamper with it,' said Sergeant Greg Sowell of the Nacogdoches Police Department.
The Columbia disaster led to a two-year suspension of Nasa’s space shuttle fleet, pending an enquiry and safety review, and ultimately a decision to wind down the shuttle programme to make way for new vehicles. Atlantis, the last of the shuttles to fly, completed its final mission last month.
The astronauts aboard Columbia mission STS-107 – commander Rick Husband, 45, pilot Willie McCool, 41, and crewmates David Brown, 46, Kalpana Chawla, 41, Laurel Clark, 41, Michael Anderson, 43, and Ilan Ramon, 48 - were honored posthumously with the highest award given within Nasa; the Congressional Space Medal of Honour.

Isle of Wight's sunken World War II tanks studied

BBC News: Isle of Wight's sunken World War II tanks studied

Maritime archaeologists have investigated ways for World War II tanks at the bottom of the sea near the Isle of Wight to be protected.

The tanks and other equipment were being carried on a landing craft which capsized and lost its cargo as it was heading for the D-Day landings in 1944.

They sit on the seabed between the east of the island and Selsey, West Sussex.

Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology is looking at how land legislation can be applied to the sea.

The project has been funded by English Heritage.

Shot to sink
The charity is working together with Southsea Sub-Aqua Club, which discovered the crafts in 2008, to investigate and chart the site.

Victoria Millership, from the trust, said it was not just ancient wrecks such as the Mary Rose that should be protected.

"The nature of seawater and the underwater environment preserves a lot more material than is often available on land and the things that are under water are often in a better state of preservation."

The Mark V landing craft tank (LCT) 2428 set off for Normandy on the evening of 5 June 1944 but developed engine trouble in the Channel and was taken under tow by the rescue tug HMS Jaunty.

On its way back to Portsmouth the landing craft capsized and lost its cargo.

HMS Jaunty fired upon the upturned hull until it sank to make sure it did not cause an obstruction. None of the crew were lost.

Better protection
The vessel was carrying two Centaur CS IV tanks, two armoured bulldozers designed to destroy any anti-tank devices on the beach, a jeep and other military equipment for the Royal Marines armoured support group.

The lost cargo and the sunken craft created two sites on the seabed 20m (66ft) below the surface.

The hull was later located about 6km (3.7 miles) to the east of the vehicle site. Both vessels have been preserved on the sea-floor for more than 60 years.

Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology hopes the project and case study will lead to better protection for underwater archaeology around England, specifically shipwrecks.

'Golden Eye' diamond expected to sell for millions at auction

From The Telegraph (UK): 'Golden Eye' diamond expected to sell for millions at auction

The diamond was seized in 2006 by the FBI in an undercover operation that led to the conviction of a businessman for money laundering.

It is currently being kept at a federal building in Cleveland, Ohio and bids will start at $900,000 (£550,000) in the online auction on Sept 6.

According to court documents businessman Paul Monea tried to sell the diamond, along with a home he owned in Ohio, to an undercover FBI agent for $19.5 million (£12 million) and a boat. The home involved had previously been the estate of boxer Mike Tyson.

The diamond originated in South Africa but it was unclear how it ended up with Monea. He was alleged to have told others involved in the case that he owned a diamond mine in Africa and received the it from a friend.

US. Marshal Pete Elliott of the Northern District of Ohio, said: "This precious gem is sure to generate interest worldwide." The Department of Justice said money raised from the sale of the diamond would help to pay for law enforcement and community programmes.

From Wikipedia:
The Golden Eye Diamond is a flawless 43.5-carat (8.7 g) Canary Yellow diamond, claimed to be the world's largest of its cut and color. It is listed at number four of the top ten notable diamonds. It came from the Kimberley area of South Africa.

Ownership
Prior to its acquisition by Ohio businessman Paul Monea, its history is unclear. The Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the diamond following an undercover investigation of Monea that resulted in his conviction for money laundering and the diamond's forfeiture to the U.S. government in 2007.

It was approved to be auctioned by a federal judge. Its sale was planned tentatively in January 2011, but after a delay it was announced it will be sold via online auction in September 2011, with a minimum bid of $900,000

Honduras finds 2.5 tonnes cocaine in submarine

Okay, not really a tale of sunken treasure, but interesting for any authors out there looking for plots featuring submarines...

From BBC News, Latin American & Caribbean: Honduras finds 2.5 tonnes cocaine in submarine
Honduran General Rene Osorio said there were more than five tonnes of cocaine on the vessel, and authorities would need two days to retrieve all of it.

The vessel is submerged because the crew tried to sink it after they were intercepted two weeks ago.

Honduras is on a key route used by cartels trafficking drugs to the US.

Coast guard officials intercepted the submarine-like craft off the Caribbean coast of Honduras near the province of Gracias a Dios.

Shipwrecks' effect on environment probed

From Delaware Beaches: Shipwrecks' effect on environment probed
OCEAN CITY -- Veteran scuba diver Ted Green isn't worried about sunken vessels near area beaches that are under scrutiny for potential oil leaks. The oil they once held, he thinks, is long gone -- already dispersed into the sea.

You would be very hard-pressed to find a shipwreck off the coast of Delmarva that has any appreciable amount of oil left in it, said Green, the owner of OC Diver. If he's right, he's ahead of the curve now that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is combing through documents about known shipwrecks to decide which ones might be at risk for leaking oil.

NOAA is working to determine which of the more than 30,000 coastal shipwrecks they've identified contain fuels that could cause ecological damage, if they spring a leak. Lisa Symons, NOAA damage assessment and resource protection coordinator, pointed out five submerged vessels offshore of the resort the administration is assessing. The closest is the Marine Electric, a coal carrier that sank in 1983. Another is the India Arrow, a tanker that had been carrying a cargo of 88,369 barrels of diesel fuel during World War II when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank about 20 miles southeast of Cape May, N.J.

Green routinely dives both locations and said to the best of his knowledge the vast majority of oil has been gone from both vessels for years, maybe even decades. The India Arrow would have posed a greater ecological threat due to the nature of its cargo, but Green's travels through the inside of the boat have indicated to him that the holds that used to contain oil have all emptied out, meaning any damage done from its fuel cargo has long since transpired.

"The boats that are carrying fuel are going to carry more potential for hazard than the others whose only fuel on board was what they were actually using for transportation," Green said. "The damage from those boats is still significant, but definitely not the same as a tanker full of oil."

Green said that even if a ship is leaking oil, it wouldn't pose any kind of threat to a scuba diver. There are a number of ships along the East Coast he said do still contain oil, and leak it in small droplets that quickly dissipate in the water and cause "fairly minimal" environmental damage.

It's not clear whether the submerged vessels will pose an environmental threat or not, according to Symons. She doesn't know for certain whether or not oil is still onboard any of the vessels. The agency hopes to conclude its investigation by the end of this year, she said, and at that point will turn its findings over to various Coast Guard bureaus. The Coast Guard will then decide if measures should be taken to further investigate the wrecks and possibly extract the fuels to prevent future leaks. The vessels in question will most likely fall under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Coast Guard District, based in Portsmouth, Va.

"It's still very much in the assessment process," Symons said of the project. "We're trying to be as smart as we can about working through this and providing the Coast Guard with the most accurate risk assessment we can."

Some of the vessels may not have broken apart completely and may still have intact fuel tanks that could begin to leak as corrosion progresses, according to Symons.

The ships assessed by the NOAA were sunk after 1907 and meet a specific criteria for size and amount of fuel on board, Symons said. Many of them were sunk by U-boats during World War II.

"That's not to say they're the only ones, because there are smaller boats with not as significant amounts of fuel on board that were ruled out," Symons said.

There are many sunken boats off Ocean City's coast, but Monty Hawkins of the Maryland Artificial Reef Committee agrees with Green that the waters surrounding the resort will dodge any problems from sunken vessel oil leaks.

Many of the sunken ships were put there intentionally as part of the artificial reef program, like the USS Arthur W. Radford, which is slated to be sunk off the coast sometime this year.

"When we sink a ship, it has to be very clean, and the Radford, for instance, is so clean right now you could open a restaurant on it tomorrow," Hawkins said. "I don't really see us having much of a problem from leaking shipwrecks near Ocean City."

Orleans man delves into sea serpent ‘mystery’

From Wicked Local (Cape Cod): Orleans man delves into sea serpent ‘mystery’
ORLEANS — During the 1800s and early 1900s eyewitness reports and newspaper articles about a sea serpent in the waters off Gloucester and the South Shore abounded. The serpent, said to be 100-feet in length, so fascinated folks that a scientific commission was formed to study it.

No credible explanation for the accounts ever surfaced and in the last 60 years there has been little mention of the creature.

But a man looking out his enormous plate glass windows that provide a panoramic view of Nauset Beach may have unraveled the mystery late last month.

Edward “Kin” Carmody, who lives on Callanan’s Pass on a bluff overlooking the beach, is a talkative, engaging man who has found time for various hobbies since he retired as a top marketing man for Kraft Foods 10 years ago. And if he isn’t working in his garden or creating new varieties of day lilies he’ll relax by sitting in a particular white wicker chair in his living room, look out at the Atlantic and watch for whale spouts. And on June 29 around 3 p.m. he saw something that is now etched in his memory.

“I saw, slightly to left,” he said pointing, his binoculars on the table beside him. “Quite a commotion of whales.”

He knew they were minke whales because they have a dorsal fin.

That was when he saw a common animal exhibit and uncommon behavior. It was a behavior that just may explain why people over the centuries have sworn they have seen a snakelike creature swimming in the water.

“As soon as I saw it I said ‘Oh my God, that may be the answer to a 1,000-year old mystery’,” Carmody recalled.

Then taking out a pad of paper on a recent sunny morning he sketched out what he saw that day: a chain of minke whales, nose to tail, whose backs looked much like the coils of the iconic sea serpent.

“They were in a chain line, they curved. It was synchronized exactly,” he said. “It was just like a gigantic snake.”

And then he pulled out another drawing.

“That is the classic sea monster that people see,” Carmody said, having quickly sketched the undulating body and dragon-like head.

The obvious difference between the two pictures is the missing head and tail in the whale drawing, but, said Carmody, the mind is a powerful thing. It will often create what you want to see, as evidenced by various mind games where your brain fills in missing words and the famous unreliability of eyewitness accounts.

First he thought the six, maybe eight, whales were playing, but then thought that was something that happened often. This ritual would need to be unusual, so he believes it may determine who the leader of the pod will be.

“That’s my hypothesis,” he said.

Scott Landry, director of the disentanglement program for Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, said there are an abundance of minke whales around. But, he explained after the caveat that the whales are poorly studied, they are usually solitary creatures – mainly because they have to eat so much a day – and don’t have a herd structure.

Still, it’s quite possible that the minke whales were in a group because there was a lot of fish or sand lance around. The line could have been “coincidental,” Landry said.

Sightings such as Carmody’s are probably one of the reasons myths develop, he added.
Carmody’s fascination with the sight may have stemmed in part from his knowledge of paleontology, another of his hobbies. (In fact he has a few fossils in his basement.) He knows there is no fossil record of anything resembling a sea serpent and he also knows that when snakes swim they swim left to right, just as they coast across the land. They don’t propel themselves up and down as a sea serpents have been depicted.

Carmody isn’t professing that he is made one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the century; he is in fact concerned, he admitted with a chuckle, that his wife will be less than pleased that he has given folks the opportunity to say he is a little nutty. But there has been nothing that has been able to explain why so many people have thought they have seen a sea serpent.
Until now perhaps.

Armada wreck discovered off Donegal

From the Belfast Telegraph (Aug 5): Armada wreck discovered off Donegal
The wreckage of a sunken vessel believed to be from the Spanish Armada has been discovered off the Donegal coast.
Underwater archaeologists are to explore the historic wreck, located in shallow waters in Rutland Harbour, near Burtonport.

Evidence uncovered during a dive survey revealed the vessel was likely to be a 16th-century ship, possibly part of the 1588 Spanish Armada.

Heritage minister Jimmy Deenihan has granted 50,000 euro for the excavation by the underwater archaeology unit from his department's National Monuments Service.

He said the discovery was a major find of significance not only to Ireland but also to the international archaeological, historical and maritime communities.

"If, in fact, it proves to be an Armada vessel, it could constitute one of the most intact of these wrecks discovered to date," he said.

"It could provide huge insight into life on board and the reality of the military and naval resources available to the Armada campaign."

Up to 24 ships of the 130-strong ill-fated fleet were wrecked along Ireland's rocky coastline. The location of the latest vessel means the search team will have better than usual access to find any artefacts that may still be on board.

Nearly 10,000 pieces of valuable treasure were discovered on the biggest ship in the fleet, the Girona, which sunk off the Antrim north coast in October 1588. The haul brought ashore by divers included hundreds of gold and silver coins, gold chains, pendants, rings and cameos containing inset rubies and pearls, silver forks and spoons, the ship's anchor, cannons and cannon balls.

Mr Deenihan said the Geological Survey of Ireland is supplying one of its research vessels, the RV Keary, free of charge as the main dive vessel off Donegal and will also carry out detailed marine geophysical surveys in the vicinity of the wreck.

The World Trade Center Ship, From Stern to Stem

The New York Times: The World Trade Center Ship, From Stern to Stem
After finding the stern of an 18th-century sailing vessel in landfill where the new World Trade Center is being constructed, what could be better? Finding the bow — or at least enough to gain a clearer picture of the length of the vessel and how it was constructed; all of which might help solve the mystery of what it was doing anchored off Lower Manhattan in the first place.

The most intriguing theory now in circulation is that the vessel may have been used around the time of the Revolutionary War as a troop carrier of some sort. “That ties in really neatly with the British military button found between the frames,” said Warren Riess of the Darling Marine Center at the University of Maine.

Archaeologists unearthed the boat in July 2010, west of and perpendicular to Washington Street, between Liberty and Cedar Streets, where the waters of the Hudson once reached. It was immediately evident that the sunken hull had long ago been sundered by underground excavation. The remaining wood was so deteriorated that archaeologists couldn’t even tell at first whether they were looking at the fore portion or the aft.

[Fred R. Conrad of The Times created a panoramic view of the vessel in place.]

Once that was settled, they hoped to find what they surmised must exist under the east side of Washington Street: the bow. That had to wait a year, until the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began excavating that area for the subterranean vehicle security center.
That brings us to July 27, when archaeologists from the firm AKRF, working for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority, left the scene of the excavation — just where they thought the bow ought to be — utterly dejected. They’d found nothing but a few slivers.

“We walked to O’Hara’s, ordered a pint and said, ‘Well, we gave it our best shot,’ ” said A. Michael Pappalardo, one of the archaeologists.

His colleague Elizabeth Meade said, “We called ourselves ‘The Boy Who Cried Ship.’ ”

Argh, but maritime stories always have a twist. Two days later, as an excavator bucket pulled away at a small shelf of soil, the archaeologists were thrilled to see whole pieces of wood falling out. They asked that workers slow the excavation. Under the mud and muck was a small but cohesive bit of the lower bow. Its discovery was reported Thursday by the Manhattan news site DNAInfo.

There was no bowsprit to be found, or figure head, or quarterboard to give the vessel’s name. This was the submerged portion of the bow, where structural timbers known as the apron, the stem post and the gripe are found. Still, it was an exciting discovery.

It can now be said that the vessel was about 50 feet long. Thirty-two feet of the stern were exposed last year, 10 to 15 feet amidships were lost long ago and three to six feet of the stem were exposed on July 29. The remnants were left in place last weekend so that Dr. Riess could inspect them. They were then taken to the AKRF office at 440 Park Avenue South to be readied for shipment to the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation at Texas A&M University.

A dendrochronological examination of wood samples by Columbia University has already disclosed that the trees almost certainly grew in the Philadelphia area and were cut down no later than the 1770s.

A button found aboard the ship, from the coat of a private in the British Army 52nd Regiment of Foot, which battled the American rebels.The button to which Dr. Riess referred is a pewter disc with an ornamental border and the number “52″ in the center. Diane Dallal of AKRF said it corresponded with the 52nd Regiment of Foot, a light infantry regiment of the British Army that tried to suppress the colonial uprising in these parts. The fact that it is pewter — not silver — means that it adorned a private’s uniform, she said.

Archaeologists are careful not to associate many of the interesting things found around the boat with the boat itself. But this button was discovered last summer between two wooden frames of the ship. So though they do not yet know the boat’s name or its mission, they may have their first inkling of who the passengers were. And they know they have found the whole thing.

Chinese submersible "Jiaolong" attempts 5,000m dive

From Xinhuanet.com: Chinese submersible "Jiaolong" attempts 5,000m dive
BEIJING,July 21 (Xinhuanet) – China's deep-sea submersible, Jiaolong, is performing an experimental exploration mission to reach depths of 5,000 meters in the northeast Pacific.

This would set a new record for a manned submersible dive. The vessel entered the water four hours ago. So far it has dived more than 4000 meters. Crew members have sent back to the control center photos they took during the diving process. The vessel is expected to resurface in about one hour. Jiaolong's main missions, include physical, chemical and biological research, as well as exploration and deep-sea salvage.

The vehicle is the world's deepest-diving manned submersible, designed to reach depths of 7,000 meters. The difference between a submersible and a submarine, typically depends on the support from another facility or vessel. In this case, a ship, The Ocean-6 helped Jiaolong in previous tests, conducting surveys of the area ahead of the dive. Jiaolong completed 17 dives in the South China Sea between May 31st and July 18th last year, reaching depths of over 3700 meters at its deepest dive.

Replica ship headed to St. Augustine

From Bradetonton.com: Replica ship headed to St. Augustine

ST. AUGUSTINE -- In a boat yard in Malaga, Spain, workers are piecing together wooden ribs and other brigantine parts to produce a replica of the Galveztown, a sailing vessel that was important a couple centuries back to St. Augustine and the American Revolution.

“They are well on the way to getting that started,” said Kathy Fleming, executive director of the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum.

The Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program is a sponsor of the project.

“We’re looking for a little bit of support to get that rolling,” she said.

But the project has been revised.

Several months ago, the naval architect working on the Galveztown found historical documentation that changed the plan, said Samuel Turner, director of archaeology at the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program.

The vessel that workers had been building was too large, Turner said.

The replica was designed to be 68 feet on deck, but the real brig was actually 53 feet on deck.

Turner said starting over was a “blessing in disguise” because it brought down the building time and the cost of the project.

The exact cost is still undetermined.

Officials held a conference to restart the project about a week ago.

After completion, the replica Galveztown should be sailing to St. Augustine next year, but official dates have not been firmed up yet, Fleming said.

The Galveztown replica will help people learn about Bernardo de Gálvez, Spanish governor of Louisiana. He played a critical role in the American Revolution by, among other things, capturing Pensacola in 1781.

The Galveztown was originally christened as the West Florida after being built by the British in New England, according to historical articles.

Bernardo de Gálvez later gained possession of the ship, changed its name to Galveztown and converted it from a sloop to a square-rigged brig.

“We’re trying to high- light this project as a way to share how the Spanish positively influenced the American Revolution,” Fleming said.

Turner, primary coordinator of the project, helped arrange for the Lighthouse program to donate many tons of timber to the project.

Around 17 tons of live oaks came from St. Augustine.

“We’re going see part of our town come sailing up one day,” Turner said.

Unidentified Sunken Object: Probably Not Alien

From News Discovery Com: Unidentified Sunken Object: Probably Not Alien
team of Swedish researchers has found what some are calling a UFO under about 300 feet of water between Finland and Sweden. According to a piece in the Vancouver Sun,

"While using sonar to survey the Gulf of Bothnia last month, Ocean Explorer commander Peter Lindberg noticed an unusual 60-foot round object. According to the Ocean Explorer website, Lindberg said he had "never seen anything like it" even though has "spent hundreds of hours watching sonar images of the sea floor." While the object seems unusual, it's entirely possible that it could have occurred naturally. Lindberg refused to speculate on the object's origins, but in doing so he may have generated even more conjecture, making reference to one of the most famous and mysterious sites in the world "Since it might be nothing we cannot afford spending funds just to have a look at it," he adds. "Even if it might be a 'new' Stonehenge standing on the bottom."

There are plenty of theories about what the USO (unidentified sunken object) might be. Lindberg offered a "new Stonehenge," though some suspect it's a natural formation, such as the rim of a small underground volcano, which certainly create a very round, prominent ring.

Others see clear evidence that the object, whatever it is, is too perfectly round to be anything but man-made. Of course, one of the most popular -- and most outlandish -- theory is that it's a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Yet there's another theory: the USO is neither an extraterrestrial craft nor a natural feature but instead a rotating gun turret from a World War II era battleship. It's possible that an explosion on the ship’s deck could have blown it out of the deck ring where it was anchored and it slid into the ocean’s depths, more or less intact. Such an explosion would not necessarily have sunk the ship, so the lack of nearby wreckage may not be a mystery.

The turret-less ship might have made it back to port, or may have continued to another location where it eventually succumbed and sank. The top-heavy turret would likely have sunk with the cannons face down in the ocean floor, and would not necessarily have been seen in the sonar image. In fact, Lindberg and his crew were originally drawn to the area in search of Swedish merchant ships sunk by the German navy in World War I.

So what is it? Until someone actually goes down to search the object more closely (or recover it) -- a potentially time-consuming and expensive proposition -- we may never know. It’s a genuine mystery, and, as is often the case, the most mundane explanation may be the most likely.

Remains of WWII Pilot Found in France

From ABC News: Remains of WWII Pilot Found in France
When a French farmer dug an irrigation ditch in this quiet corner of northern France last week, he stumbled upon pieces of metal which brought back the terror that gripped this part of Europe during World War II.

As if digging through history, the farmer uncovered the remains of Lt. William Patton's Mustang P-51 plane. French authorities said the pilot had been identified by his military badge, although checks were still being carried out.

The discovery is helping to tell the story of Patton's last moments, as his plane crashed in Longueville, France, near the Belgian border more than 50 years ago.

Along with his plane, French authorities found his uniform, his life vest, his military tie, his aviation scarf, riddled with bullet holes.

His silk parachute, made in Lexington, Kentucky, and on display at a local police station, was discovered unopened, a sign that he had gone down too fast to bail out. Lt. Patton's engine was also bullet-marked.

Historians say late in WW II, Mustang pilots sometimes went on missions on their own. The Mustang was the workhorse of the U.S. military, enabling the Allies to gain air superiority over the Germans.

The young Americans who flew them were considered brave, and daring, and glamorous _ and Lt. Patton was one of them.

Did the Town Hide the Incident?

The reason why people in the town of Longueville never reported the accident remains a mystery.

According to a newspaper article, dated Jan. 17, 1945, an airplane crash was reported two days earlier but the incident was never mentioned again.

Town authorities believe that not knowing whether the wreckage was American or German, townspeople probably simply covered up the accident.

Lt. Patton was a victim of both Luftwaffe bullets and French civilian fatigue.

But today this community paid tribute as the discovery was displayed at a local police station.

"He's someone who died for us so we could be free," said one French policeman. "We are very moved by this."

So who was Lt. Patton? Where is his family now? American officials will now investigate. Even his bones, not on display, will be examined for clues.

His remains and belongings will be sent home.

For now what remains of his torn uniform, his plane, his parachute, have told us at least some of his story and reminded us of the thousands of Americans who were lost or buried somewhere throughout the battlefield of Europe and will never return home.